Wych Kaosayananda

WYCH KAOSAYANANDA

Date of Birth: 1974

Also known as Kaos, director Kaosayananda was born in Bangkok to Thai parents who were in the diplomatic corps. Because of his parents' work, Kaos grew up in Moscow, Copenhagen, Islamabad and New Zealand before moving to America to attend Emerson College in Boston, where he graduated with a film degree in 1996. While there, his fellow film students dubbed him Kaos, a shortened version of his surname, and he now uses the moniker as his professional name.

Kaos' obsession with film began when his parents took him to see his first movie, Jaws (1975), at the age of eight. It inspired in the boy a lifelong passion for film and, ultimately, filmmaking. As an only child, living in foreign embassies around the world, he took refuge and delight in immersing himself in the world of movies. The directors he credits with influencing his sense of cinema include Steven Spielberg, John Woo, Michael Mann, Michael Bay and Hong Kong's Wong Kar-Wai.

After school, Kaos returned to his native Bangkok and wrote the original screenplay for his first movie, FHA. Armed with a budget breakdown and 15 pages of storyboards, he took his project to a local film studio and a month later, FHA was green-lit with a $550,000 budget, making it the highest budgeted film in the country's history. The cast featured the biggest stars in Thailand, and Kaos signed on as director. It was an instant hit in Thailand when it opened in 1998 and remains one of the top ten highest-grossing films in Thai history.

Kaos made his Hollywood debut in 2002 with Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu.

Filmography:

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002)
FHA (1998)